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Daily Digest: 5/30/07

BY Joshua Levy | Wednesday, May 30 2007

The Web on the Candidates

  • Our friends at Eventful were featured on CNN's The Situation Room yesterday, in a report about the most-demanded candidates in the country. As our charts show, Barack Obama (or, as the British-accented reporter said, Obam-er) is the most-requested candidate, followed by Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul, who according to the report is ahead of R. Kelly but, sadly, still trails Kelly Clarkson. He's also the only candidate to schedule a specific event -- a pre- "Real Time with Bill Maher" rally last week -- based on Eventful demands.

The Candidates on the Web

  • Joe Biden is the next candidate in the YouTube Spotlight hot seat, and he's asking viewers how they think we should extricate ourselves from oil dependency, or put much less mildly, "What is it you're willing to do to free us from the axis of oil and these outrageous oil companies who are sucking us dry?"
  • It also looks like John Edwards will be interviewed by YouTube tomorrow. He's already undergone the Spotlight treatment, and it looks like he's taking this online video thing seriously (though he did tell WNYC's Brian Lehrer that YouTube is "good for democracy" a while back).
  • Thanks to his Internet team of Tim Tagaris and Matt Browner-Hamlin, Chris Dodd is routinely live-streaming stump speeches and house parties using Ustream.tv, and Browner-Hamlin is traveling with him on the campaign trail, capturing a ton of video that will apparently soon be featured on "D-SPAN," the Dodd video channel (but can I download the videos to by DoddPod?). Today he'll be on Firedoglake at 5pm ET for a live video blogging session in which he'll respond to questions left by FDL readers in the comment section. This is the first combination of live video streaming and liveblogging that I've heard of; will peoples' heads explode at the confluence of the two?
  • DomeNation is at it again, this time with an interview with Ron Paul's communications director, Jesse Benton. There are some good nuggets in the piece, which covers Paul's YouTube strategy to his Digg strategy (does any other candidate have a Digg strategy?) to the role of the mainstream media in covering his campaign. The Internet is "exciting for people on the right or the left that just care about democracy and care about the voice of citizens," Benton says. He also points out that Ron Paul recognizes "the need to make sure that the Internet is not regulated, not interfered with by government because it's one of the last true vehicles of liberty." Not sure how that relates to Net Neutrality, but it doesn't sound good...

In Case You Missed It...

MySpace is reserving the right to track funds raised by the candidates on their site, but Nancy Scola is skeptical about their intentions.

Colin Delany writes that a group of developers have created their own presidential campaign widgets.

TechPresident has released more data candy, this time launching a new badge featuring the number of Facebook supporters for each candidate.

Alan Rosenblatt finds that that there's more stuff than fluff on the web compared to TV, and that's a good thing.

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

This Isn't What Political Air Time Usually Means

MoveOn.org is asking supporters for $150,000 in donations to fly a plane above high-dollar fundraisers for Mitt Romney with "a message that reminds voters how he represents his corporate and 1% donors." MoveOn previously hired a plane to fly over Romney's Liberty University graduation speech with the message "GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT." GO

There's a New $200 Million Fund for Super-High-Speed Broadband Projects

An initiative to build and test gigabit-speed broadband networks is set to fund up to six next-generation Internet access projects across the country, fueled by a new $200 million broadband development funding program, Gigabit Squared and Gig.U announced this morning. GO

New Rice University Paper Chronicles Impact of the Internet On U.S. Foreign Policy

We all know that the Internet has transformed the way that the United States conducts diplomacy, and the way that it views national security, but where should we look to find evidence of this? This is the wide-ranging subject matter of a new paper published on Tuesday by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper provides a round-up of some of the major turns of events between 2005 and 2011 in the realms of Internet governance, the development of online public diplomacy at the State Department, the evolution of the Internet-fueled Arab Spring, and the establishment of the shadowy U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Meade, Maryland, among other things. GO

Messin' with Lamar Smith, Revisited

Remember that grassroots fundraising campaign to put a "Don't Mess with the Internet" billboard in the home district of Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act? All of the money required came in, and Fight for the Future, the advocacy group opposing more stringent copyright protections online, writes that the billboard went up. GO

Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions

After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. GO

PD+ This Thurs 1pm: Thriving Online With Howard Rheingold

I'm really looking forward to talking with author Howard Rheingold this Thursday on the next PD+ teleconference. His new book, Net Smart, is a concise and thoughtful guide to understanding and making the most of the hyper-networked, always-on, firehose of information and distraction that is the contemporary experience of anyone who uses ... GO

City of Joplin, Mo. Launches New Online Center Ahead of Tornado's Anniversary

The city of Joplin, Missouri launched its new web site over the week-end ahead of the May 22 anniversary of the massive tornado that devastated the city and killed 161 people. The new site enables Joplin citizens to sign up for emergency alerts via text message, e-mail and RSS. In addition to those alerts, individuals can also sign up for ... GO

In Virginia, City Council Debates to Include Questions Posed Online

The Alexandria Democratic Party in Alexandria, Virginia has partnered with online civic engagement platform ACTion Alexandria to include questions solicited in an online forum in the final Democratic primary debate for a City Council election there on June 4, ahead of the June 12 election, according to a statement released by the group. ACTion Alexandria hopes to work with both parties during the general election.

Participants in the project can add questions to the forum, or vote on questions that have already been posed, although each user is only given three votes to distribute. Users are also encouraged to use their real names. Questions submitted so far hit on topics ranging from broadband access to a ban on food trucks in the city.

GO

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